Tag: xenophobia

Japan And India Disagree With Biden’s Claim They Are “Xenophobic”

Japan and India have both responded to Joe Biden’s charge last week that they are “xenophobic” because they have not embraced mass immigration.

As we highlighted, Biden asserted that Japan and India are facing economic struggles while the US economy is performing well “because we welcome immigrants.”

“Think about it,” Biden said during a fundraiser, “Why is China stalling so badly economically, why is Japan having trouble, why is Russia, why is India, because they’re xenophobic. They don’t want immigrants. Immigrants are what makes us strong.”

Fox News reports that the Japanese Embassy responded to the comments, stating “We are aware that the U.S. government has clarified that President Biden’s comment was made in the context of explaining that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants and that immigrants make the U.S. stronger, and that his comment was not made with the intent of undermining the importance and permanence of the Japan-U.S. relationship.”

However, Japanese officials added “It is unfortunate that some of the comments were not based on an accurate understanding of Japan’s policies, and we have raised this point to the U.S. government and explained Japan’s positions and policies once again.”

India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also took issue with Biden’s remarks, pointing to the country’s GDP growth and urging that India is an open society.

“I haven’t seen such an open, pluralistic, and diverse society anywhere in the world,” the minister stated during an Economic Times event, adding “We are actually not just not xenophobic, we are the most open, most pluralistic and in many ways the most understanding society in the world.”

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Who is Alexei Navalny? Behind the myth of the West’s favorite Russian opposition figure

Compressed into a two-minute soundbite, the story of Alexei Navalny and the recent protests that have erupted across Russia seems simple enough. The Russian opposition figure who recently survived an attempt on his life — an alleged poisoning delivered via Novichok-laced pants — was arrested and convicted of breaching his bail conditions in a process that can be fairly described as unjust. In response, his supporters took to the streets across the country in protest.

Ask a Russian, like Katya Kazbek, and they will tell you something different: things are way more complicated than they seem. Katya is a writer, translator and the editor-in-chief of arts and culture magazine Supamodu.com who today lives in New York by way of Moscow and Krasnodar Krai in the North Caucuses. In an effort to give some nuance to Navalny and what has been happening overseas, they recently put together a widely shared Twitter thread that served as a highlight reel of Navalny’s political career — and the picture it painted was not pretty. Having read this, I contacted them to ask more about a man whose treatment has been unjust, but who — it turns out — is no hero.

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